Poland Set to ‘Quickly Overtake Britain in Military Strength And Income’

Britain is on course to becoming a ‘2nd tier’ European country like Spain or Italy due to financial decline and a weak military that weakens its usefulness to allies, a specialist has actually alerted.

Research teacher Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE concluded in a damning new report that the U.K. has been paralysed by low financial investment, high tax and misdirected policies that could see it lose its standing as a top-tier middle power at current development rates.

The stark evaluation weighed that succeeding government failures in guideline and bring in financial investment had actually caused Britain to miss out on out on the ‘industries of the future’ courted by developed economies.

‘Britain no longer has the industrial base to logistically sustain a war with a near-peer like Russia for more than two months,’ he composed in The Henry Jackson Society’s most current report, Strategic Prosperity: The Case for Economic Growth as a National Security Priority.

The report assesses that Britain is now on track to fall behind Poland in terms of per capita income by 2030, which the central European country’s military will soon exceed the U.K.’s along lines of both workforce and equipment on the present trajectory.

‘The concern is that as soon as we are reduced to a 2nd tier middle power, it’s going to be almost impossible to return. Nations do not come back from this,’ Dr Ibrahim informed MailOnline today.

‘This is going to be accelerated decrease unless we nip this in the bud and have strong leaders who have the ability to make the challenging choices right now.’

People pass boarded up shops on March 20, 2024 in Hastings, England

A British soldier reloads his rifle on February 17, 2025 in Smardan, Romania

Staff Sergeant Rai uses a radio to speak with Archer teams from 19th Regiment Royal Artillery during a live fire range on Rovajärvi Training Area, during Exercise Dynamic Front, Finland

Dr Ibrahim invited the government’s choice to increase defence costs to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, but cautioned much deeper, systemic issues threaten to irreversibly knock the U.K. from its position as an internationally prominent power.

With a weakening commercial base, Britain’s to its allies is now ‘falling behind even second-tier European powers’, he alerted.

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‘Not only is the U.K. anticipated to have a lower GDP per capita than Poland by 2030, however likewise a smaller sized army and one that is unable to sustain release at scale.’

This is of particular concern at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, with Britain pegged to be among the leading forces in Europe’s quick rearmament job.

‘There are 230 brigades in Ukraine right now, Russian and Ukrainian. Not a single European country to install a single heavy armoured brigade.’

‘This is a huge oversight on the part of subsequent federal governments, not simply Starmer’s problem, of failing to buy our military and essentially contracting out security to the United States and NATO,’ he informed MailOnline.

‘With the U.S. getting tiredness of supplying the security umbrella to Europe, Europe now needs to base on its own and the U.K. would have remained in a premium position to really lead European defence. But none of the European countries are.’

Slowed defence spending and patterns of low productivity are absolutely nothing brand-new. But Britain is now also ‘failing to change’ to the Trump administration’s jolt to the rules-based international order, said Dr Ibrahim.

The former consultant to the 2021 Integrated Defence and Security Review kept in mind in the report that in spite of the ‘weakening’ of the institutions as soon as ‘secured’ by the U.S., Britain is responding by hurting the last vestiges of its military may and financial power.

The U.K., he stated, ‘appears to be making significantly costly gestures’ like the ₤ 9bn handover of the strategic Chagos Islands and opening talks on reparations for Caribbean Slavery.

The surrender of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean has been the source of much scrutiny.

Negotiations in between the U.K. and Mauritius were begun by the Tories in 2022, however a contract was announced by the Labour federal government last October.

Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute defence and security believe thank alerted at the time that ‘the relocation shows fretting strategic ineptitude in a world that the U.K. government refers to as being characterised by terrific power competition’.

Require the U.K. to provide reparations for its historic function in the servant trade were revived also in October last year, though Sir Keir Starmer said ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries that reparations would not be on the program.

A Challenger 2 primary battle tank of the British forces throughout the NATO’s Spring Storm exercise in Kilingi-Nomme, Estonia, Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speak throughout a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, January 17, 2025

Dr Ibhramin examined that the U.K. appears to be acting against its own security interests in part due to a narrow understanding of danger.

‘We comprehend soldiers and rockets however stop working to fully envisage the risk that having no alternative to China’s supply chains may have on our ability to react to military aggression.’

He suggested a brand-new security design to ‘boost the U.K.’s tactical dynamism’ based upon a rethink of migratory policy and hazard evaluation, access to uncommon earth minerals in a market dominated by China, and the prioritisation of energy security and self-reliance through investment in North Sea gas and a long-overdue rethink on atomic energy.

‘Without immediate policy modifications to reignite development, Britain will become a lessened power, reliant on more powerful allies and susceptible to foreign browbeating,’ the Foreign Policy columnist said.

‘As global economic competition intensifies, the U.K. needs to decide whether to welcome a vibrant development program or resign itself to permanent decline.’

Britain’s dedication to the concept of Net Zero may be laudable, however the pursuit will prevent development and obscure strategic objectives, he warned.

‘I am not stating that the environment is trivial. But we simply can not afford to do this.

‘We are a country that has failed to buy our economic, in our energy infrastructure. And we have considerable resources at our disposal.’

Nuclear power, consisting of making use of little modular reactors, might be a benefit for the British economy and energy self-reliance.

‘But we have actually failed to commercialise them and certainly that’s going to take a substantial amount of time.’

Britain did introduce a brand-new funding model for nuclear power stations in 2022, which lobbyists including Labour politicians had insisted was essential to discovering the cash for pricey plant-building jobs.

While Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation firm, has actually been heralded for its grants for small energy-producing companies in your home, entrepreneurs have actually warned a wider culture of ‘risk hostility’ in the U.K. suppresses financial investment.

In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million individuals fell by 7.5%, per the ONS. Pictured: Waterlooville High Street, Waterlooville, Hants

Undated file picture of The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands

Britain has consistently stopped working to acknowledge the looming ‘authoritarian risk’, enabling the pattern of handled decrease.

But the resurgence of autocracies on the world phase risks even more undermining the rules-based worldwide order from which Britain ‘advantages immensely’ as a globalised economy.

‘The hazard to this order … has actually developed partly due to the fact that of the lack of a robust will to protect it, owing in part to ponder foreign efforts to overturn the acknowledgment of the true hiding risk they pose.’

The Trump administration’s warning to NATO allies in Europe that they will have to do their own bidding has actually gone some method towards waking Britain as much as the seriousness of purchasing defence.

But Dr Ibrahim warned that this is inadequate. He urged a top-down reform of ‘essentially our whole state’ to bring the ossified state back to life and sustain it.

‘Reforming the well-being state, reforming the NHS, reforming pensions – these are essentially bodies that use up enormous amounts of funds and they’ll simply keep growing significantly,’ he told MailOnline.

‘You could double the NHS budget plan and it will actually not make much of a damage. So all of this will require basic reform and will take a lot of nerve from whomever is in power due to the fact that it will make them unpopular.’

The report lays out suggestions in extreme tax reform, pro-growth immigration policies, and a renewed focus on protecting Britain’s function as a leader in modern industries, energy security, and international trade.

Vladimir Putin speaks to the guv of Arkhangelsk region Alexander Tsybulsky throughout their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

File image. Britain’s financial stagnancy could see it soon end up being a ‘2nd tier’ partner

Boarded-up shops in Blackpool as more than 13,000 stores closed their doors for good in 2024

Britain is not alone in falling back. The Trump administration’s persistence that Europe pay for its own defence has actually cast fresh light on the Old Continent’s dire circumstance after years of sluggish growth and reduced spending.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research assessed at the end of last year that Euro area economic performance has actually been ‘controlled’ because around 2018, highlighting ‘diverse challenges of energy reliance, manufacturing vulnerabilities, and shifting global trade characteristics’.

There stay profound disparities in between European economies; German deindustrialisation has struck organizations hard and forced redundancies, while Spain has grown in line with its tourism-focused economy.

This remains fragile, however, with homeowners progressively upset by the viewed pandering to foreign visitors as they are priced out of inexpensive lodging and trapped in low paying seasonal jobs.

The Henry Jackson Society is a foreign policy and national security believe thank based in the UK.

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